Player Development; Academy Re-Styling

Nah, this blog entry isn't about the academy skill that has been discussed on the fora, but about how I decided the re-style my academy. I've been pretty active in youth games over the past few seasons, playing between 400 and 600 games a season (manually playing, not counting auto resolves)...

I did all of that with a single squad of youth players, consisting of about 30 or so young players in different age ranges. I had 15 year olds in the same squad as the 19 year olds and the 20 year olds. To be fair, they did pretty well, getting me to a spot near and at times in the top 10 of the World Youth Rankings.

I still had the idea I could do more to maximise the development of my players though. That is the main purpose of the youth squad anyway, develop players you can either implement in first team or sell on for a profit. The youth rankings are a nice indication whether or not you're doing well, but these rankings are not a goal in themselves.

Since all of my players were bunched together in a single group, I decided to re-style my academy into new age groups, so I could sign every team into competitions against players of similar ages.

The Academy U19 and Academy U17 were created for the younger players to get match experience against players of their own age, which will generally help their performances during a match. Better performances should lead to a faster development of skills.

The Academy U21 acts as a gathering bin for players ineligible for the younger squads and the bigger younger talents, blending them into a single talented squad which will perform in the highest level youth competitions.

This is probably the best way to develop my talented U17 generation. Players like Clodoaldo, Velimir Jovanovic, Mahmoud Said, Fabio Antoniacci, Christian Rapp and Denivaldo are potential first teamers and I want to develop their skills as efficient as possible. Any other pointers are welcome by the way...